Following the planned reduction in the Bank’s workforce, the multinational US company would no longer hold its current title as the American banking industry’s largest employer, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/09/20/262580/bank-of-america-to-slash-16000-jobs/
The cuts will take the banking giant’s total employment to 260,000, the Journal said, the lowest level since 2008, when the bank acquired failing mortgage lender Countrywide Financial and the Merrill Lynch investment bank.
Most of the cuts are expected [...]
Northern Rock vs. Gold
by Adrian Ash
BullionVault
Wednesday, 5 September 2012
Five years on, what does the Northern Rock crisis mean for gold investing…?
EARLY ON the morning of Friday, 14 September 2007, nervous savers formed queues outside several branches of Northern Rock – the former building society then writing 1-in-5 of all new UK mortgages.
Waiting patiently to withdraw their money, the Rock’s customers were spooked by news that the bank had taken an emergency [...]
French government to rescue mortgage lender CIF
France’s government plans to intervene to rescue Credit Immobilier de France after the struggling mortgage lender was hit by a liquidity crisis following a recent downgrade by credit rating agency Moody’s, Le Figaro newspaper reported Saturday.
CIF’s board met Friday night and formally demanded government help, the newspaper said, without naming its sources.
The lender, which has about 300 branches throughout France, did not return a [...]
U.S. mortgage lender to pay $125m to borrowers steered into high-cost subprime loans or higher fees
Also to pay $50m to homebuyer assistance programs
Wells Fargo & Co has agreed to pay $175million to resolve allegations it discriminated against qualified African-American and Hispanic borrowers in its mortgage lending, the U.S. Justice Department said on Thursday.
In the second-largest settlement of its kind, the biggest U.S. mortgage lender will pay $125million to borrowers who [...]
Meanwhile in the UK the banks are putting up their mortgage rates, while the Bank of England keeps the base rate at 0.5%. The increase in mortgage rates is slowly strangling the property market (which I believe is still in a bubble).
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/mortgageshome/article-2142779/Mortgage-giant-Halifax-raises-rates-despite-base-rate-freeze.html
Halifax, Britain’s biggest mortgage lender, yesterday increased its rates, despite the Bank of England keeping the base rate at 0.5 per cent for the 38th month in a row.
It [...]
850,000 Halifax borrowers affected by move that will see many mortgage repayments rise by £40 a month
Others lenders set to follow suit in coming months
Rises due to difficulties borrowing from European money markets caused by financial crisis
Hike in interest rates expected to add £300m to UK mortgage repayments over course of 2012
Council of Mortgage Lenders say repossessions set to rise by 22 per cent
Around one million homeowners were hit by [...]
MUNCIE, Ind.—Johnny Whitmire shuts off his lawn mower and takes a long draw from a water bottle. He sloshes the liquid from cheek to cheek and squirts it between his work boots. He is sweating through his white T-shirt. His jeans are dirty. His middle-aged back hurts like hell. But the calf-high grass is cut, and the weeds are tamed at 1900 W. 10th St., a house that Whitmire and [...]
From Bloomberg:
Warren Buffett, who controls the biggest shareholding of the No. 1 U.S. mortgage lender, said banks were victimized by some homeowners who refinanced their loans before getting evicted.
“Large numbers of people who have ‘lost’ their house through foreclosure have actually realized a profit because they carried out refinancings earlier that gave them cash in excess of their cost,” Buffett, chairman and chief executive officer of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK/A), [...]
From FT:
Moody’s downgraded the credit ratings of Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo, three of the biggest US banks, over concerns that the US government would be less likely to rescue the lenders if they faced failure.
“Moody’s believes that the government is likely to continue to provide some level of support to systemically important financial institutions. However, it is also more likely now than during [...]
by Vivian Giang, Businessinsider
It looks like banks are finally moving on the backlog of delinquent mortgages. Default notices surged 33% in August, with a 200% increase by Bank of America.That means many Americans are receiving a scary letter for the first time. Here’s what you should do if you are one of them:
Contact your mortgage lender immediately. Avoiding notices and calls will only make things worse, as the [...]
From HuffPost:
Of all the foreclosure warnings issued during the housing crisis, perhaps oddest is the one demanding no money at all.
Earlier this year, in Northampton, Massachusetts, a man, referred to in reports only as Mark, received a notice demanding that he pay $0.00 to his mortgage lender, Bank of America, or his home would be seized, according to local television network News 22 WWLP. The notice [...]
by zh
*BANKS LOSE PIVOTAL FORECLOSURE CASE IN MASSACHUSETTS HIGH COURT
*MASSACHUSETTS TOP COURT DECIDES CLOSELY WATCHED IBANEZ CASE
*MASSACHUSETTS DECISION MAY AFFECT FORECLOSURE-CRISIS CASES
Here is why this is relevant:
This was an Amicus Curiae brief (friend of the court) filed by the Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley. (see attached)
Page 10:
“Plaintiffs’ claims that the Land Court’s ruling will cause widespread confusion or significant cost to innocent parties are greatly exaggerated, and such [...]
by ZH
The third major bank joins JPM and Ally, which have already halted foreclosures, in admitting that one of its officials “signed up to 8000 foreclosure documents a month and typically didn’t read them.” Which means Bank of America is about to halt its foreclosure process. Which leaves us with the last big mortgage lender: Wells Fargo, which is quietly doing the opposite. As American [...]
1) Japan Debt Safer Than US Debt: China Economist
“BEIJING (Reuters) – China has been buying record amounts of Japanese government debt because it is less risky than U.S. debt, at least in the short term, a Chinese government economist said on Wednesday.Investing in Japanese bonds is safer because so much of the country’s debt is held domestically, and the yen is on course to strengthen [...]
The bankruptcy of America is getting borderline hilarious, even as stock capitalization surges by about $1 trillion based on funny money to be printed by the ECB with the Fed’s assistance. In the second coming of moral hazard, one piece of news that some may have missed is Fannie Mae’s earlier announcement that the mortgage lender is now more bankrupt than ever before – the [...]
How much of the retail sales increases are coming from people not paying their mortgage:
Lender Processing Services just put out its “Mortgage Monitor Report,” and we have a new record:
The nation’s foreclosure inventories reached record highs. February’s foreclosure rate of 3.31 percent represented a 51.1 percent year-over-year increase. The percentage of new problem loans also remains at a five-year high. The total number of non-current first-lien mortgages and REO properties [...]
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